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MAGFest presents "Jamspace" at PAX East

The good people from MAGFest, the Music And Gaming Festival, will be providing a Jamspace at PAX east this year.

What is Jamspace?
Jamspace is an area where anyone who has any idea how to play an instrument is invited to come up and play music, and anyone who doesn't is invited to watch. The main focus is usually video game music, so you're guaranteed to hear classic stuff that you know and love all weekend.

What equipment is provided?
Almost everything you could ever need. We provide the lighting, amps, guitars, basses, pianos, and drums, and then you provide the talent. You're welcome to bring your own instrument as well. We don't have any violins or saxophones or the like, so when someone brings one of those in, it always gives an unexpectedly awesome result.

Who's allowed to play?
Anyone. Can you play some stuff on the piano? Go ahead. Do you have a backing track that you'd like to play guitar over? Be our guest. Are you in a full band that wants to play a mini set? The stage is yours. Do you want to meet other musicians and jam with them? Jam away.

For those of you interested in playing, it might be a good idea to start throwing out some song ideas so you can have an idea of who you might be jamming with and be a little more prepared to play stuff.

The other week I was just jamming out to some Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger songs on harmonium accompanied by guitar and bass. If anyone else currently lives in the Boston area and wants to cover songs from these games (or others) give me a shout!

Songs I want to play with everyone:
- Cave Story - running hell
- Anything from FF6
- New Super Mario Wii Athletic Theme
- And, /everything/ from Chrono Trigger, like all in a row back to back or something. seriously. yes. we can do it in 20 minutes.

I want someone to bring:
- dijiridu for Kefka's theme
- freaking accordion for some zelda 64 song of storms
- sax for some cowboy bebop, real folk blues
- bongos for katamari damacy main theme
- some kind of vocoder/autotune VST-ish thing for Still Alive from portal

Man this has got me thinking that we need to do a radio broadcast with some improv videogame music stuff before PAX East to get everyone in the mood...

I've seen this deal at Otakon-- there's a signup sheet for jam times that fills the hell up FAST. Hoping to swing by for a late-nite jam at some point, though. I play guitar and trombone. Still have my ancient student t-bone, but it's a little busted (sticks in 5th position) and I need practice. Might bring it (perfect for ska cover of the Tetris theme), might not.

Can we plug our own stuff into the mixer? I have DS-10 for the Nintendo DS, and have programmed up a bunch of tunes for that.

This would be so awesome but my bass trombone would be too much of a pain in the ass to lug on a train+planeride there, not to mention I'd pretty much be relying on people to bring me sheet music as I don't have a modicum of talent for improvisation.